Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (the book for which there may or may not be a link to hidden in the shared class folder), gets into some fascinating stuff right around Chapter 6, "The Meaning of Composition."  In class, we only touched on the major hypothesis, that of the Given/New, Ideal/Real, and Centre/Margin.  We've also danced around ideas of appropriateness in visual design.  The interesting stuff lies here, in that idea--and in a larger sense, our entire major.  As S&TC Majors, we are expected to know what is appropriate for given audiences, making us prescriptivists of a sort.  I would argue that while prescriptivism is an outdated way of conceiving language use, it does have a place, albeit one constrained by context and/or audience.

 What first caught my eye in the chapter was the mention of Walter Ong, whose name pops up a lot when broaching linguistic themes.  Ong, paraphrased in a description of how the printed page evolved:
describes how sixteenth-century title pages broke up words without regard for syllable boundaries,  and  used  different  typesizes  in  a  way  that  was  not  related  to  the  relative importance of words, but served to create pleasing visual patterns.
Credit for this image goes here, as soon as I remember where I got it.


 This intro to the chapter proceeds to describe the further evolution of the printed page, ending up with the assertion that this method of expression was hijacked by a bourgeoisie intelligentsia, who, on their way to becoming prescriptivists, lost the ability to describe new forms, new modalities that were opening up.

 Appropriateness functions in very small contexts.  As a sweeping essentialization of language in all its forms (including rhetoric), it doesn't work.  Ask Andrew Keen, who was largely lambasted for his 2007 screed, Cult of the Amateur, in which he railed against the sudden influx of user-generated content available via what media pundits had dubbed "Web 2.0."  
The monkeys take over. Say good-bye to today’s experts and cultural gatekeepers — our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies and Hollywood movie studios. In today’s cult of the amateur, the monkeys are running the show. With their infinite typewriters, they are authoring the future. And we may not like how it reads.

 Sometimes, in S&TC classes, I fear that the same sort of hierarchically-based discourse will lead me straight into Andrew Keen's back yard.  Quick secret?  It's part of the reason I'm only now attending college, at 40-plus.  Art (which I consider rhetoric to be) defies.  Just that.  Art defies.
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